Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  And, as he did in 1775 following the capture of Fort Carillon, he had a purpose. He would not allow Serilda’s followers to again resurrect that witch.

  ELEVEN

  SLEEPY HOLLOW, NEW YORK

  JANUARY 2014

  ALBERT JOHN WHITCOMBE-SEARS had always considered himself a rationalist and a skeptic. He believed only in what he could see with the evidence of his own eyes, or that which could be proven by scientific theory.

  In this he was following in a family tradition. Both the Whitcombe family and the Sears family traced their lineage back to the first European colonists to come to the New World in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and they were products of the Enlightenment. Since then, the tradition of both families was to only believe in the tangible.

  What Al did not realize was that it also meant he’d find himself believing some things that seemed on their face to be impossible, yet he saw them with his own two eyes.

  It was his first encounter with Sheriff August Corbin that opened his eyes to what people referred to as the supernatural. Al never liked that term. If it occurred in the world, then it was natural. He found supernatural to be a contradiction in terms.

  He still remembered the day when everything changed.

  At the time, he’d been working as a reference librarian. He worked in the main reading room of what Al continued to insist was the New York Public Library’s Research Building. It was referred to by the maps and tourist websites as the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, thanks to Mr. Schwarzman’s admittedly very generous donation of a hundred million dollars.

  Regardless, he had commuted to Manhattan from his apartment in Sleepy Hollow five days a week for that job, while his father and uncle ran the Whitcombe-Sears Library, which had been in the family ever since the Episcopal Church gave up on the structure.

  Then one day a decade ago, before Schwarzman’s donation got the library named after him, Al got a call on his cell phone from a 914 number he didn’t recognize. He almost didn’t answer it. Most numbers he didn’t have in his phone’s directory turned out to be telemarketers, but it could’ve been one of the neighbors or some friend of the family whose number he hadn’t put in the phone.

  A gruff voice on the other end had said, “Mr. Whitcombe-Sears, this is Sheriff August Corbin in Sleepy Hollow. I’m afraid I have some bad news. Your father and your uncle have been murdered.”

  Al no longer remembered any of the rest of the conversation. In fact, he no longer recalled anything that happened between his standing in the library’s reading room with its high ceilings and susurrus of low-level noise made by people doing research and clacking on their laptops and hearing Corbin speaking the word murdered, and his standing outside the converted church next to Corbin in front of yellow crime-scene tape that blocked the entrance. Colored lights strobed in the air and he had asked Corbin, “What happened?”

  “We’re still trying to figure that out.”

  “Right.” Al knew that was cop-speak for we have no bloody clue what happened. “I want to see the bodies.”

  “That’s—that’s not the best idea, Mr. Whitcombe-Sears.”

  “Why not?” Al had been indignant at the time that this tin-pot local cop would presume to tell him he couldn’t see his own family’s bodies.

  After a hesitation, Corbin had said, “I’m okay with showing you your father, but not your uncle. I’m afraid that whatever did this—well, we only were able to identify your uncle because he still had his wallet and cell phone on him.”

  Corbin had taken him to see his father, who was in a body bag. Someone from the medical examiner’s office unzipped it, and he saw his father with a shocked expression on his face and a very large hole in his chest.

  “What did that?”

  “We’re not sure yet.” Corbin had nodded to the other cop then, and zipped up the bag.

  Al had gotten sick of that answer but said nothing.

  It was that night that things got weird, as he had gone home to his apartment. He lived on the ground floor of a three-apartment townhouse. It had one bedroom, a small kitchen, and a large living room/dining room, plus access to the small backyard behind the townhouse. For obvious reasons, he had trouble sleeping that night. To make matters worse, his restless tossing and turning was interrupted by a tapping sound coming from the living room.

  Padding out of his bedroom, he saw a figure standing on the other side of the sliding door to the backyard.

  “Dad!?” He said the word before his sleepy mind realized what he was seeing.

  His father was butt-naked, with the same big hole in his chest that he’d seen when he was in the body bag—dead!—and rapping on the window.

  Unable to figure out what else to even do, Al went and slid the door open. “Dad, how—what—it—what’re you doing?”

  For a zombie, Dad had sounded remarkably coherent. “I’m sorry, son, but they’re after me, and I’ve gotta hide.”

  “Dad, you’re—you’re dead.”

  “No one’s more aware of that than me, son, believe me. Got a big hole in my chest and no pulse. Nonetheless, here I am, and there’s some crazy guy after me. Chased me outta the morgue. Dunno how long I can give ’em the slip, but I needed somewhere to lie low, and the cops are at the house and the library.”

  Unable to bear the sight of his father like this—he honestly hadn’t been sure what disturbed him more, the nudity or the aforementioned big hole—he had grabbed a bathrobe for his father to wear.

  “I’m hoping that whoever that was trying to nab me won’t think to look here. Even if they do, at least you can help me out.”

  “Uhm—how exactly?” Al had been grateful that he could now look at his father, though that mostly had just shown him how watery and yellow his father’s eyes were now, and how sallow his skin.

  “I’ve got no clue, son. It’s my first time being dead.”

  Before Al could reply to that, the report of shattered glass filled his ears. Throwing his arms up to protect his face, he looked under his arms to see that something had smashed the sliding door from the outside, leaving shards of glass all over his living room floor.

  To this day, Al couldn’t adequately describe what he saw standing in the broken doorway. It was human-shaped, more or less, but he couldn’t make out any features. It was like something he saw out of the corner of his eye—except it was like that when he was staring straight at it.

  Its voice had been deep and resonant and sounded exactly what Al imagined death would sound like if it could talk. Though talk seemed an inadequate description for the sound that seemed to echo in Al’s very bones.

  You will come with me, Frederick Whitcombe-Sears. You have a task to perform.

  “And what if I say no? You’ll kill me?”

  Al had to admit that he was impressed with his father’s defiance in the face of—whatever this was.

  I have already taken your brother. Shall I take your son as well?

  “You’re not taking anybody,” said a gruff voice from the backyard.

  Looking past the—the thing, Al had seen Corbin standing in the moonlight, pointing his pistol at the creature.

  You are a fool, August Corbin, if you believe that your puny weapons of iron and steel can hurt me.

  “Oh, you’re right,” Corbin had said. “Iron and steel? No chance. I’d be dead in a cold minute.”

  Then Corbin had pulled the trigger, which was even louder to Al than the breaking glass had been.

  Right after the shot fired, the monster had screamed. He had seen the smoke emitting from the creature’s—for lack of a better word—body, had smelled the stink of burning flesh, had heard the sizzling sound that the burning flesh made.

  Corbin had squeezed the pistol’s trigger a second time, and this time there had been another scream. The stink of burning flesh intensified to the point of nausea.

  The creature had collapsed to the floor. Corbin had entered the apartment, stood over the monster, and then fired a th
ird shot.

  That third one had been the loudest of all. Al had feared that he would hear the echo of the third shot’s report for the rest of his life. (He wouldn’t. He often went weeks without thinking about it now, a decade later.)

  He knew, though, that he’d recall the sight that followed until the day he died: the monster melted right there on his living room floor. The burned-flesh smell had gotten even worse, and Al had been convinced that the brown stain it was leaving on his tile floor would never ever come out. (It wouldn’t. The landlord had to replace the floor, which came out of Al’s security deposit.)

  Al had just stared at Corbin, who smiled under his beard. “Silver bullets.”

  “That’s it?” Al had been incredulous. “It’s as simple as that to stop—whatever that thing is that turned my Dad into a zombie?”

  “Not that simple—these things are impossible to find. Don’t know how the Lone Ranger managed it.”

  “Sheriff, what’s—” Al had started to say, but he had been cut off by a plaintive moan from behind him.

  “Ooooooh, boy.”

  Whirling around, Al had seen his father collapse onto the living room floor right next to the—the whatever it was.

  “Dad!” Al had run to his father’s side as he had collapsed, but he no longer moved or spoke or did anything. Kneeling down beside him, Al had checked for a pulse—but, of course, that yielded no useful results, since he hadn’t had a pulse when he was walking around a moment ago, either.

  Corbin had put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mr. Whitcombe-Sears. But your father is really dead. This demon here brought him back to life long enough to try to get a book out of that library of his.”

  Al had looked at Corbin incredulously then. “All this for a book? And what do you mean, ‘demon’? There’s no such thing!” Before Corbin could say anything in reply, Al had then said, “And there’s no such thing as zombies, either, says the guy who just had a conversation with his dead father. I still don’t understand any of this, though.”

  “Let me take care of this mess first. I’ll get your father’s body back to the morgue, then I’ll get a hazmat team in here to clean up the mess. You free for lunch tomorrow?”

  Al had looked around helplessly. “I really don’t think I’m going to work, so yeah, I’m free for lunch.”

  “Meet me at McCabe’s tomorrow at twelve thirty. You ever been to McCabe’s?”

  Al had just shaken his head.

  “Best apple pie à la mode you’ve ever had.”

  Corbin had been as good as his word. Dad’s body was returned to the morgue without any official report, and a hazmat team did the best they could with his floor, though it wasn’t enough to get rid of the brown stain of whatever it was.

  The next day, he did indeed meet Corbin for lunch at McCabe’s.

  “I was like you, once,” Corbin had said. “I thought that monsters were stories. But they’re not. They’re real, they exist, and one of them mutilated your uncle and then killed your father and turned him into a zombie.”

  “This is—a lot to process.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “How’d you know to use silver bullets?”

  Corbin had scooped up some of the vanilla ice cream that surrounded his apple pie. “I didn’t, at first. In stories, monsters would often be vulnerable to silver bullets, so I took a shot.” He had smiled, then, and added, “So to speak,” then had popped the ice cream into his mouth. “Anyway, it worked the first time, and I had to hope it would work this time, too.”

  Al had inherited the library, and so he gave his notice to NYPL and then took over the family business. He found a number of fascinating texts in the rare-books section of the library—kept up near where the church organ used to be—including one text that informed him that the demon who killed Dad and Uncle Charlie was named Uzobach.

  Corbin would continue to call upon him for research, later sending along his protégé Jenny Mills.

  But now, all hell was breaking loose. The first of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse had arrived, the two Witnesses (one of whom was Corbin’s partner, Jenny’s sister Abbie) had begun their work, Corbin was beheaded, and Al was frightened.

  He didn’t believe in prophecy. Or, more to the point, he didn’t believe that prophecies had to come true. Knowing the future automatically changes it, and Al didn’t believe for a second that anything was preordained.

  Still, he was frightened, mostly because Corbin was dead. Jenny was a good kid, but sometimes was a little crazy. Not the kind of crazy they stuck her in Tarrytown Psychiatric for, but still. And Corbin had limited the people who knew the truth to those who encountered it first. So Al was part of the “inner circle” thanks to what happened with his father, and Jenny was because she was possessed by a less substantial demon than Uzobach.

  But Abbie Mills wasn’t, and now she was at the vanguard of this whole nonsense, along with a time-displaced Revolutionary War soldier, something Al—even with everything he’d seen—wouldn’t have believed if Jenny hadn’t insisted. She’d told him the whole story after Al had told her about how Washington used the Independence Crosses.

  Al also realized that he couldn’t remember the guy’s name. It was something vaguely birdlike, but that was all he could recall.

  He was sitting in the library going through some old tomes, trying to find out more about Mercier the silversmith.

  “Eureka!” he cried out when he finally found what he was looking for in a text by a nineteenth-century mesmerist named Lawrence Conroy, who had been associated with Aleister Crowley, and who had been targeted by Harry Houdini. The famous magician had made an aggressive hobby of debunking the many frauds who peddled magic and spiritualism.

  As it happened, Houdini never was able to debunk Conroy, and Al knew why: he was a legitimate student of magic, and he knew everything there was to know about the runes used by the great alchemist Gaston Mercier.

  One of the two officers who’d been assigned to guard the library against the theft of their Congressional Cross wandered by the desk, just as Al finished reading up on the runes and how they might be used on items of spiritual significance that were made of silver—like, say, the Independence Crosses.

  “Hey, Al, me and Diana are gonna order from the Chinese place. You want anything?”

  “Some fried dumplings would be good, thanks, Ray.” Then a thought occurred. “Hey, Ray, that British guy who’s consulting on Corbin’s murder. What’s his name again?”

  “Ichabod Crane, why?”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah I know, but hey, I’ve gone through life with the last name Drosopoulos, so who am I to judge?”

  Al smiled, in part because he got the bird part right, but mostly because he knew that name.

  “I gotta check something downstairs.”

  “Okay. We’ll let you know when the food gets here.”

  Nodding, Al went to the back, past the exhibits and downstairs. In addition to the restrooms, the library’s basement also served as storage for the exhibits that were not on display.

  Al spent the better part of half an hour digging around trying and failing to find what he was looking for. He might not have taken so long if he didn’t keep getting distracted by shiny things—sometimes literally, as the collection included a lot of jewelry. He’d been the caretaker of the library for ten years now, and he’d acquired a few pieces on his own, but there were still a lot of things that Dad and Uncle Charlie, not to mention Grandma before them, had collected that Al hadn’t yet catalogued. He’d been meaning to get around to it, but cataloguing had always been Al’s least favorite part of librarianship.

  Serving the public, he loved. There were few things more satisfying than helping someone find what they need, especially when it was clear when they arrived at the desk that they didn’t even know what that was, at first, until Al helped them get there.

  Putting the exhibits together was also fun—finding all the wonderful treasures that he
and his family had accumulated over the decades and finding the right combination of them to make for a particularly fine display …

  He even liked shelving, which was usually the top of the list of library workers’ least favorite tasks. The act of putting a book away in the right place so it could be found again by the next person who’d need it gave him a huge sense of accomplishment for some reason.

  But he hated cataloguing. A tendency he was regretting at this particular instant, since if he had catalogued it all, he’d know where to find the stupid thing.

  It was right when he found it that he heard Diana’s voice from upstairs. “Yo, Al, food’s here!”

  “Be right up!” he called up the stairs. The item had been wrapped in cloth and stored in a small wooden box that was slightly warped. But then, the box in question was more than two centuries old.

  He set the item, still cradled in the cloth that it had been wrapped in, aside on top of one of the crates.

  As he hopped up the stairs, taking them two at a time—suddenly, he was really hungry—he heard a horrible scream from upstairs.

  He hesitated, stumbling on the top step and almost falling back down them. Reaching out, he snagged the railing with his right hand, and managed to right himself, but his wrist twisted in an odd direction.

  Wincing with pain, he cradled his right hand in his left arm and continued up the stairs more slowly.

  The last time he heard a scream like that, it was when Corbin’s silver bullets had struck the flesh of the demon Uzobach.

  “Diana? Ray? You guys okay?”

  Silence greeted his request.

  Throwing common sense to the wind, he left the staircase and slowly worked his way to the doorway that led to the main part of the library.

  He saw nothing except for the main desk, the computer stations, and the many shelves of books. He heard nothing except for the low hum of the computers and that annoying flickering buzz that one of the fluorescent lights always made no matter how many times he changed the bulb.